You Drive for Uber? A Driverless ‘Army’ Could Replace You–Soon?

Currently, Uber employs around 9.9 million drivers worldwide, they are in 70 countries and over 15,000 cities. This is both 'regular' and Uber Eats conveyors. But, down the road, could they be gone?

  Uber Has Been Pursuing Partnerships with Driverless Vehicle Companies

Some of the names are familar, Tesla, Waymo, others such as Zoox and Baidu, are not. But they're all actively building or pursuing driverless, autonomous vehicles.

Waymo operates driverless taxis in 7 US Cities. Now, Uber is pursuing that but from a different angle.

 According to TechCrunch.com, the last two years, Uber has been building, and in some cases already has, relationships with around 30 manufacturers who build or engineer driverless vehicles.

   Does This Correlate With Layoffs Within the Company?

The news of Uber laying off ten percent of its corporate workforce, engineers, software workers, managers etc.  sent some ripples through the tech and delivery industry. The 3,300 cuts included 93 in WA State, mostly Seattle. The company has made previous significant cuts not long ago, too.

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While the usual corporate-speak about realignment, streamlining, cutting out exess layers and so on was issued by the company, Officials also admitted it will free up more resources to pursue the driverless tech.

 Uber was Once Actually Trying to Build the Tech

Between 2014 and 2020, they acquired some tech firms, and chased after what TechCrunch called "moonshots," but since then have reset.  Now they are pursuing relationships that apparently would allow them to utilize the driverless vehicles built by other companies, for their fleets.

Uber has been working with numerous global companies, in the US and Europe, to build fleets that down the road would conceivably replace  their carbon-based-life-unit drivers.  They are already offering driverless rides in some test cities, but many experts say a complete and total 'replacement' would be at least ten years or more down the road. Maybe even 20.

 So, What About Other Rideshares?

But it does make one ponder, what would happen to the millions of human drivers?  One could always switch to Lyft...but, new reports indicate they too, are working on the same idea.  They're pursuing deals with Waymo already.